Why not spy on the Germans?

Instead of defending the intelligence gathering of his staff, Barack Obama claims to not know what they are up to.

AFP Photo: Christopher Furlong

The real outrage isn't that the United States spies on its allies but that it lacks the nous to keep this sensitive but nevertheless necessary activity secret, writes Timothy J Lynch.

The Germans are apparently outraged that the United States has been listening in on its chancellor's mobile calls, a revelation Edward Snowden decided had to be leaked.

The US traitor revealed not a state secret and more a self-evident truth. All states spy. They have both historical and strategic reasons for doing so. The United States, with fingers in many pies, has a necessary reliance on good and extensive intelligence.

America has been caught out far more often because it spied poorly or not at all. If only it had spied more accurately on Iraq in the decade before it invaded - better spying would have prevented war. Increased surveillance of Japan in 1940-41 could have precluded a much deadlier war.

Intelligence failures punctuate American history. Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Saddam's WMD. America has often found itself in a fight because it did not read the tea leaves. The 9/11 Commission Report is a brilliant exposé of the failure of US spying.

Snowden has it wrong. It is what America does not do or does insufficiently that gets it into bother. It's foreign policy is far more the sins of omission than commission.

The greater concern of the recent German bugging revelation is less that Obama is cheating on Angela and more that the National Security Agency apparently lacks the capacity to make and keep such intelligence gathering secret.

Can we imagine how Snowden would fare if he tried leaking Kremlin secrets? Because the United States is an open system it will always be prey to naive moralists, intent on harming it, egged on by spies representing other states. Seeking refuge in the bosom of Russian autocracy is nearly as absurd as Julian Assange, his companion-in-arms, doing so in Equador's.

Why do these anti-Americans seek succour in such problematic regimes? Can we imagine a world in which Snowden is the principled defender of liberalism? Would he have our back? Is the cause of democracy advanced by revealing its imperfections?

The irony, probably lost on Snowden, is that he has become a super-spy, doing more damage to his country's interests than the behaviour he indicts. By doing Russia's bidding he is advancing a cause no greater than narrow power politics.

It is not only autocracies that spy. France, the UK, Germany, Australia all routinely listen in on the conversations of their partners. The French are masters at it - which is why we hear very little about it. If anything, the Snowden revelations highlight the ineptitude of some US operations in contradistinction to these states.

Richard Nixon had to resign from office when his botched internal spying efforts were exposed in 1973-4. Can we imagine any French, German, or Russian leader suffering the same fate? American politicians have a haplessness in comparison.

Watergate was illegal but spying on foreign states has never been. It is what diplomats do. Snowden thinks the activity when conducted by Americans is immoral but it is as old as the state system itself. Indeed, much older. Without a spy in Christ's camp his mission could never have been fulfilled. Judas was the chief enabler of Christian theology.

I write this from Dallas, Texas in the company of numerous NSA experts, Democrats and Republicans. If there is a consensus among them it is that President Barack Obama has been exposed less for the mistrust of friends, aka Merkel, but for the abandonment of his own side.

Peter Baker of the New York Times refers to this as Obama's "implausible deniability". When the buck should stop with him, he pleads ignorance. Instead of defending the intelligence gathering of his staff, he claims to not know what they are up to.

This ignorance is strength approach rankles many within the US intelligence community. This is a far greater dereliction than the revelation of spying on Germans. Losing the trust of the German government is far less problematic than losing that of your own side.

Timothy J Lynch is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities & Social Sciences, University of Melbourne. View his full profile here.